Fresh Start: your advice

I know I had a couple of posts, and they really didn't get the time of day probably because they were long, borning, and really cluttered. I am looking to start fresh and hopefully get to my point fast in the follow message.

I want to start fresh, starting now. Here is the idea I have to use in regards to inserting, editing, and deleting Basket ITEMS. This picture was taken in regards to the same concept, only to BASKETS. So in your mind, just erase BASKET NAME and replace with BASKET ITEMS. http://www.btkdesigns.com/step1.gif

Now, that is great for adding more items or editing existing ones, but what would be a good method in order to allow my client to choose which particular items she wants in a particular basket. That could be a complete separate page from what I just showed you, that is fine. Simpler is better in this case.

Thanks
Bryan

p.s. For some other images in regards to the above, you can use step1, step2, step3, step4, step5, step6, step7, and step 8.gif They are examples of what I will be using to edit the gift baskets themselves.

Re: Fresh Start: your advice

Originally posted by jag5311 Now, that is great for adding more items or editing existing ones, but what would be a good method in order to allow my client to choose which particular items she wants in a particular basket.

Can you not just have a list of possible items on the EDIT BASKET page where the user selects (with checkboxes maybe) which of the possible items should be included in the basket?

I thought of that, but one problem would be that she would have to go through 200 items to do that. Thing is, I need a way in which she could change or delete the ones she wants or doesn't want from each particular basket.

I am not at my own computer right now, but when I do, I have an idea I want to show you.

Then I would recommend using 2 related select boxes, where the first one is item categories, and when you pick a category the second box populates with those items. There are custom tags at the Macromedia exchange that will generate the Javascript to do this based on a query result. If you can't use that, then you can have 2 pages instead, one with categories and one with the items in that category. This way the client can quickly navigate through the prodcuts to find the ones she wants to add.

Hey Kite, here is the current plan I think I may take, give me your thoughts.

I have a row explaining what each column is, and then another row where I have the Row # (using CurrentRow), then I have the basketname to be affected (since this page is being used in conjunction with the basket edit page, a.k.a, whatever basketID=#URL.basketID# was chosen, the page I am doing now will affect it. So the appropriate basketname shows up. Then next to it is a drop down list of the 190 items. I also have a check box.

Now, since each basket wouldn't contain anymore then 20 items, I plan on using whats in that image and looping it 20 times, so there are 20 rows with the same information.

Then the owner can pick from each row which item she wants. Then, lets say she has chosen 15 items out of 20 rows, she would place checkmarks next to the items she wants included, so only checkmarked items will get included in the database.

How does that sound? I figured the way I have it allows her to add/edit items very easily PER gift basket.

I am re-building a gift basket website for a relative and I am making it dynamic via coldfusion. I am using an access database. Currently I have a page that shows the baskets currently in the database. Along with that, it includes an EDIT, DELETE, and INCLUDE ITEMS links. This is an edit application for the owner who is computer illiterate. Here is a screen shot to give you a rough ideahttp://www.btkdesigns.com/basketupdate.gif (non live)http://www.btkdesigns.com/basketupdate2.gif (live)

As you can see, I have the row #, the basket name (that was passed), a list of the current individual items that go in the basket, and a checkbox. There are 190 items in that list.

I want that whole bottom row to be done 19 more times, so there is a total of 20 rows with all that same information. The idea behind it is so the owner can pick the basket from the previous page, then on each row, choose an item (different item per row). Lets say she decides to only pick 15 items and leaves 5 blank. She would then checkmark items 1 through 15, leaving the last 5 blank. Then she would submit this information. When it is submitted, it would appear in the database like thishttp://www.btkdesigns.com/accessupdate.gif

1 basket (because of the passed variable) and multiple items. Now, she would have to do that per individual basket. Now, if she comes back to a basket she had previously added items to, I want those items to show up as she had left them. Then if she makes a change, such as changing an item, or maybe reducing the amount by 5, so the total is 10 (she would uncheck the 5), then they would be removed from the database.

I really need some help on this, I just don't have the knowledge for it. If you think you can help, I would really appreciate it.

The problem with your approach is that it limits a basket to 20 items. Whenever you see a solution like this, that says 'ah just output x number of static rows, that should handle it no problem' a red flag should go up.

I would make it more like a shopping cart, where the user picks something and says "add this to the basket" and the page refreshes, showing what has been added to the basket so far. The user can then keep adding stuff to the basket, or delete things from the basket, etc. When they are done, the press an 'I am done' button.

I wrote a short article at builder.com that has some basics about starting a shopping cart...maybe it will help:

The idea is that after choosing the CHOOSE ITEMS link which passes the basketID variable to the next page, the owner could see which items are currently in the basket along with the basketname she is currently working with. THere would be a link to ADD ITEMS to the basket. She would then be taken to the add items page and would pick from the drop list which item she wanted to add. She would click ADD and there would be a confirmation, she would then go back to view the change of it being added in the basket. There would be a link next to each basket called DELETE. So if she no longer wanted an item, bam, it is gone. I am trying to make this as easy as possible not only for myself, but the owner. It DOES almost have to be baby steps with her.

The link I provided gives you more insight into the sql of that page that would display the appropriate basket items VIA the appropriate basketID.

hmm, I might be missing something but not sure how/where the question about the SQL comes into play. Yes, you'll need to do SQL at the end of the process, once the user says "OK, I'm Done", but that it independent of the mechanism used to populate the basket on the application side.

This is the way I would see it.

[list=1][*]User is on admin page[*]User presses link 'create new basket'[*]User is on 'manage basket page'[*]Page shows 'no items in basket yet' at the top[*]User selects an item from a drop down list and clicks 'add to basket'[*]Page refreshes and shows 'Basket contains: Item A' with a delete button next to it in case they want to remove it[*]User selects another item from the list and hits 'add to basket'[*]Page refreshes and says Basket contains: Item A, Item B (with delete links for each)[*]User is done adding things to the basket.[*]User hits 'I'm Done, Save Basket'[*]Insert Basket page runs, which creates the basket in the DB.[/list=1]

Editing an existing basket would work much the same way except it would not be empty to start with. This can all be done easily with SESSION variables to keep track of the basket items until they are ready to save the basket.